There have been hundreds of heroes who have joined the Avengers throughout the decades that followed the team’s origin. They vary from trained killers to billionaire playboys/philanthropists, literal Gods, and even Cosmic Beings. This period has seen, a number of X-Men joining the team, despite being the famous characters that everyone has heard about: Wolverine, Rogue, Beast, and Storm. Further, there are second rung X-Men including Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver who have been part of several Avengers team, and the same is true for Wonder Man and Havok.
Then comes the C-graders such as Roberto Da Costa aka Sunspot.
Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod created Roberto in 1982, and he was among the original New Mutants, a youngster blessed with the capability of soaking solar energy and converting it into physical strength. After he discovered his power during a brawl against racist soccer players, Roberto joined other teens who later became his fellow New Mutants: Xi’an Coy Manh (Karma), Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane), Danielle Moonstar (then under the code name Psyche) and Sam Guthrie (Cannonball).
While Professor Charles Xavier had trained them as students, they went on to become superheroes of their own standing, and together undertook some fascinating adventures. For many decades, Sunspot was housed in the X-corner of the Marvel Universe, but, only in a small way. He featured in events of X-Men as well as Marvel, but, not in any major role. While the X-Men and Mutant lists have expanded tremendously in the 54 years of their existence, it is not difficult to comprehend that any minor character in X-Men would get sidelined in this expansion. Sunspot turned out to be one such guy.
Avengers vs. X-Men changed all that in 2012. After the fight between Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and the Children of Atom regarding Phoenix’s cosmic power. Captain America and Iron-Man resolved to re-establish the core Avengers team from scratch, a process they called Avengers Machine. Although, they wanted the seniors including Thor, Black Widow, Wolverine, Spider-Man, and others. They also endeavored to groom new blood to merge with their expansion plans. Two of those happened to be Roberto and Sam. However, those two were not really too keen on being a part of the Avengers whom they had battled only sometime back. It was also not making things easier that they were summoned in the middle of their retirement. However, when Roberto came to know that Captain America personally called to invite them, he knew it was not an offer to be rejected.
Jonathan Hickman’s version of the main Avengers book that started in 2012 is very lengthy and astonishingly extensive. Despite everything, the roster for Hickman’s book is most likely the largest ever witnessed by the Avengers, and it has almost 25 characters enlisted. During Hickman’s work, Roberto was transformed from being a light-hearted character to one of the core Avengers, thanks primarily to the 11th issue of the series. In this issue, Captain America tasked a small team to go to Hong Kong and gather intel on the prototype of a weapon being sold. Roberto and Sam were required to handle some AIM agents at the casino where the sale was to take place, and who were later given an offer by the duo to join them as double agents.
That’s when it all became interesting for Roberto and pushed him to an entirely new journey as an Avenger.
Although Captain America and Iron-Man had been through a chase stretching across eight months before the Secret Wars, Roberto was focused on the mission, and he took the call to handle the upcoming intrusions which risked wiping out the entire multiverse. Contrary to other X-Men who never had a choice between X-Men or Avengers teams, Roberto is on both the teams and decides not to focus on the modalities. His double agent kept him updated about the interdimensional tech owned by AIM, and after a “hostile takeover,” Roberto formally took over the AIM and started using them to find out about the incursions.
One aspect about Roberto that was never displayed before he became an Avenger was that he was very rich. Not matching Tony Stark in wealth, but, certainly rich enough to buy the evil group and also finance his new team, which was then called Avengers Idea Mechanics, and later on American Intelligence Mechanics.
Hickman is the guy who allowed Roberto to be capable of owning AIM. However, writer Al Ewing was the guy who did it. While he was relieved from active duty courtesy the Terrigen Mists, the New Avengers and USAvengers comics managed to provide him his glory moments. He not only defeated the Ultimate Marvel’s Reed Richards (presently known as The Maker) but, he also did the same while impersonating the president and playing the Mission Impossible theme. It wasn’t till the Secret Empire’s middle when he managed to use his powers without being afraid of death.
By the time USAvengers ended, Roberto had handed over everything owned by him to his fellow Avengers Toni Ho, the ex-Iron-Patriot, to allow her running AIM while he would simply be a normal member of the USAvengers. The character has a fantastic journey, especially over the last few years. It all started with a routine addition to X-Men and went on to feature as the largest superhero team in the Marvel Universe. It led to a tremendous reshuffle of a second rung evil organization into a full-scale enterprise undertaking scientific missions and doing good things. Roberto managed to win over the AIM workers by utilizing Charles Xavier’s trait of spotting the good in them, even going on to announce health insurance for everyone who signed to work for him. A lot of talk has been based about Batman doing a controversial amount of work to help jailed villains, but, Roberto is the guy who really does good work, even after the covert agents infiltrating his company had joined HYDRA or previous Supreme Leader Forson to destroy everything that he has accomplished.
Sunspot will play a key role in the New Mutants film releasing in April, and we don’t think that his high profile debut would end with one shot. Now that Disney/Fox merger is going on, it is expected that X-Men will join the MCU in some way or the other. A few mutants are bound to feature in a live-action format, and we just hope that Roberto is one such guy. AIM might have drowned in the present MCU, but, the story of Sunspot taking over an evil organization and succeeding greatly with it is a premise which will certainly have ample live-action appeal to explore.
